tapping into the seo goldmine - the customer network
TRANSCRIPT
Lithium Confidential1
Tapping Into the SEO Goldmine –The Customer NetworkMarch 2010
Lithium Confidential2
Speakers:
Phil Soffer
Lithium Technologies
Ray "Catfish" Comstock
BusinessOnLine
Tapping Into the SEO Goldmine – The Customer Network
Lithium Confidential3
About Lithium Technologies
Lithium Confidential4
Lithium Social CRM: Driving Real ROI
Your Customers
Innovate
PromoteSupport 66% increase in
customer purchases.
Increase Sales$3MM saved from 300K
calls deflected annually
Reduce Costs
300% increase in beta
program participation.
Accelerate Innovation
Powering the Customer Network
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About
BusinessOnLine
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Ray "Catfish" Comstock
Senior Search Strategist,
BusinessOnLine
Overview• About BusinessOnLine
• Convergence of Social Mediaand SEO
• Online Social Community Benefits
How Communities Affect SEO• Content
• Links
• Real Time Search
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About BusinessOnLine
Founded: 1996
Headquarters:
San Diego, California
BusinessOnLine is a
performance-driven online
marketing agency focused
exclusively on search engine
and internet marketing
strategies.
Selected as one of
Magazine’s
Top Interactive Agencies
for 2008, 2009 & 2010
• Google Adwords Certified Company
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Certified
Ambassadors
• MSN Certified AdCenter
Professionals
• HFI Certified Usability Analyst
• Omniture Certified Professional
Certifications
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Performance-Driven Online Marketing
Web Analytics
Web Development
User Experience
Online Strategy
SEO/SEM
Social Media
+178% Total Traffic
+113% Organic SEO Traffic
+23% traffic from organic search results
+ 372% Organic Traffic in Google
+ 293% Organic Traffic Overall
+ 75% Total Page Views
+38% in Material Sales
+11% in Avg. Dollar Sales
+75% Online Renewals
+53% Monthly Returning Visitors
+74% US Site Conversions
+122% Overall Site Conversions
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Social Media & SEO Convergence
• Social Media has been creating content/links since the first forum
• Blogs are a huge force in the world of SEO
• Yelp reviews get pulled into Yahoo local search
• Universal search integrates social media components
• YouTube is now the worlds second largest search engine
• Google real time search
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Online Community Benefits
SEO – Allows you to rank higher for
target keyword phrases.
• User Generated Content
• Authoritative Links
• Real Time Search Opportunities
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Audience Poll
1Are you currently operating an Online
Community?
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How Online Communities Affect SEO
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How Online Communities Affect SEO
1 Content
2 Links
3 Real Time Search
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Content Strategy
User generated
content (UGC) can be
generated through
social media in a
number of ways:
• Forums
• Blog Commenting
• Reviews
• Videos
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Content Strategy
UGC tends to be keyword focused and is
typically effective at targeting the “long tail”
which occurs naturally in online
conversation.
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Content Strategy
Community platforms,
such as Lithium allow for
user generated content to
be created in an SEO
friendly manner.
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Content Tactics
Be an active
participant in your
community.
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Content Tactics
Ensure that your
community’s
information
architecture is
keyword focused.
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Content Tactics
Optimize top
level category
pages by hand
(Page Titles &
Meta Data).
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Content Examples
http://forums.logitech.com/
Pages Index in Google: 83K +
http://forums.t-mobile.com
Page Indexed in Google: 121K +
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Links
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Link Strategy
A Link is a Vote, take advantage of your:
• Internal Links
• External Links
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Internal Link Strategy
Social Media is effective at creating keyword
focused internal links:
• Communities provide thousands of new opportunities for you to
internally link social media content to relevant content within your
site
• Communities allow users to internally link content for you
• Tags allow users to create keyword focused links
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External Link Strategy
Social Media is very effective at generating external links that influence SEO.
• Many links are generated as a result of increased visibility through Social Media (Community Engagement, Blogging, Video, etc)
• Some links are generated by asking for them through Social Media channels (Lithium Community, Twitter, Blogging, FaceBook, etc)
• Some links are generated as a result of your community being an authoritative hub of information about your relevant subject matter
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Link Tactics
Link text (or alt text) should be keyword focused, especially on homepage
logo links.
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Link Tactics
A right hand column menu for
“Most Popular Products” is a
potential mechanism.
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Links Example
Barnes & Noblehttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookclubs/
Links include:
Forbes Best of the Webhttp://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/category.jhtml?id=230
Austin Public Library
http://www.austinlibrary.com/referral.cfm
Friends of Rutgers
http://english.rutgers.edu/alumni/newsletter/spring_summer_05/beyondtheclassroom.html
Eagle Valley Library District
http://evld.org/br.resources.cfm
Townsend University
http://tiger.towson.edu/users/plige1/istc653/bookclubs.htm
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Real Time Search
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Audience Poll
2How many of you have integrated Twitter
with your Online Community?
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Real Time Search Strategy
Google now incorporates real
time search results:
• MySpace
• FriendFeed
• Jaiku
• Identi.ca
• Yahoo Answers
• News Articles
• More
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Real Time Search Tactics
• Encourage users to use Twitter
• Show users genuine value in subscribing to your Twitter feed
• Announce blog posts through Twitter
• Create keyword focused hash tags
• Time Sensitive, Twitter-only coupons and discounts
• Attribution analytics
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Real Time Search Examples
T-mobile
Lithium Twitter
integration
encourages users
to tweet.
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Phil Soffer – VP, Product Marketing
Summary
Q&A
Lithium Confidential34
Lithium Platform: Lots of Keyword Opportunities
Conversations contribute
keywords for SEO
User generated tagging,
kudos, and labels expand
keyword attribution
SEO friendly mark-up and
hand-optimized category
pages
Lithium Confidential35
Extensive Linking Opportunities
Tribal Knowledge Base:
Authoritative hub linked
internally and externally
URLs optimized for SEO
http://supportforums.blackberry.co
m/t5/Your-Stories/bd-p/YourStories
Users link community
content
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Enhancing Real-Time Search
Twitter Integration
increases volume of
Tweets with your content
Active community links in
multiple social networks
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Speakers:
Phil Soffer
Lithium Technologies
Ray "Catfish" Comstock
BusinessOnLine
Q&A
Lithium Confidential38
Next Steps
Complimentary SEO Performance Labs
• Discuss different SEO tactics with a subject
matter expert that can help achieve your
marketing objectives
Lithosphere Community
http://lithosphere.lithium.com/
• Check tomorrow for more Q&A posted from
today’s webcast
Lithium Confidential39
Thank You!
BusinessOnLine SEO Blog:
http://www.businessol.com/seo-blog
Follow Catfish On Twitter:
http://twitter.com/BOLSearch
More Questions?
Contact Candyce Covington
P 619.699.0767 x242